First novel, Earth, to Launch February 19, 2015

My first novel, Earth, is being published by Seattle’s Booktrope, and the official launch is this Thursday, Feb. 19th. Join our mailing list on my website, carolineallen.com, and be entered to win a couple of fun promo prizes. I’m a visual artist and metaphysical coach (besides being a fiction writer) and you could win a 9×12 original watercolor or a tarot reading on the day of the launch.

Earth is one of four novels in the Elemental Journey Series (Earth, Air, Fire, Water). They are a hero’s journey through a world rocked by climate change. Pearl Elizabeth Swinton grows up rooted to the soil in EARTH. She moves abroad and floats above the culture (and gets some distance) in AIR. In FIRE, she experiences a break down of her world vie and her ego burns up in the city of London. And finally, she goes through profound healing in WATER in the Pacific Northwest.

All four novels explore the development of the psyche in the midst of a global environmental crisis. How can you possibly find yourself when the very earth beneath your feet is unstable? And is there a new world paradigm at the end of this hero’s journey, a new way of “being” forced upon us by the rapid destruction of the planet?

On Earth

In rural Missouri in the 1970s, thirteen-year-old Pearl Swinton has just had her first mystical vision. There is no place for Pearl’s “gift” in the bloody reality of subsistence farming and rural poverty. As her visions unfold, she must find her way in a family and a community that react with fear and violence. When Pearl discovers that her Aunt Nadine, the family shame, has a similar gift, she bicycles across the state to find her. That trip unexpectedly throws Pearl into a journey to save her runaway sister and sends her into a deep exploration of herself, her visions, and her visceral relationship to the earth. Told with fierce lyricism, Earth is a story about the importance of finding one’s own truth and sense of self in dire circumstances and against the odds. It is also a story about the link between understanding ourselves and our relationship with the earth. In this first of the four-book Elemental Journey Series that will follow Pearl across continents and into adulthood, Caroline Allen introduces a form of storytelling that is unflinching in its honesty, filled with compassion, and underscored with originality. Includes a thought-provoking Book Group Guide.